On 30 April 2026 Rocket League finally added Easy Anti-Cheat. Online matches now require EAC, BakkesMod overlays are gone, and a lot of long-time players braced for the usual side effect — losing Steam Deck and Linux support. The good news is that one didn't happen. Psyonix kept Linux, SteamOS and the Steam Deck fully supported, and folded the most popular BakkesMod features directly into the game on the way through.
Here's what actually changed.
What EAC is doing in Rocket League
EAC is now required for any online match — Casual, Competitive, Tournaments, private matches. Rocket League launches with the anti-cheat enabled by default for those modes.
You can turn EAC off for everything that isn't an online match: training, offline play, LAN, replay viewing. Steam Workshop maps work either way. That carve-out matters because it's what lets the modding community keep going for offline work.
The Steam Deck and Linux part — the good surprise
Psyonix said it directly: "Steam Deck and Linux are also supported, so you can keep playing on your preferred hardware." Independent testing on Linux distributions showed the post-update game entering matches without issues.
That makes Rocket League the opposite story from games like Battlefield 6, where the anti-cheat blocked SteamOS entirely. The implementation difference is the whole point: when the developer is willing to support Linux and Proton in their anti-cheat rollout, the Steam Deck stays playable. It can be done.
What you actually lose
BakkesMod and its plug-in ecosystem are off while EAC is active. That's why your in-game MMR display, custom training tweaks, and team colours in Free Play stopped working overnight — the overlay layer those plugins used isn't allowed under EAC.
This was the trade-off Psyonix made deliberately. EAC simply can't co-exist with third-party processes injecting into a competitive game, and Rocket League's competitive integrity has been chewed on for a while.
What Psyonix moved into the base game
The interesting part of the announcement is that Psyonix didn't just kill the popular community features — they ported the best of them in:
- Native MMR display.
- Custom Training Randomisation.
- Team colours in Free Play.
The credit was given out loud. Psyonix specifically named "Bakkes and all of the BakkesMod plugin volunteer developers" who pioneered these features. That doesn't bring back every plug-in, but it does take the sting out of the loss for the ones most people actually use.
What to do as a returning or current player
A short checklist if you boot up Rocket League and something looks broken:
- You can still play online — make sure EAC installed cleanly. The first time after the update can be a slow launch while it sets itself up. If it fails outright, the standard "EAC is not installed" fix path applies: run the launcher as administrator, let your antivirus through, verify game files.
- If you used BakkesMod, retire it for online play. Use the native equivalents Psyonix added instead. Keep BakkesMod for offline practice if you really want — you can disable EAC in those modes.
- On Steam Deck or Linux, you should not need to do anything. EAC ships in a form that works through Proton. If you do hit an issue, update Proton or SteamOS to a current version and verify the game files.
The bigger picture
The honest story here is two-sided. On one hand, Rocket League's competitive scene gets actual anti-cheat for the first time, which it badly needed. On the other, a vibrant modding community lost the seamless overlay path it had built up over years.
Psyonix's compromise — keep Linux working, fold the most-used mod features in, leave EAC off for offline modes — is closer to a model for how to do this than to a cautionary tale. The contrast with the kind of rollout that quietly drops Steam Deck support is worth holding onto.
The takeaway
Online Rocket League is now an EAC game. BakkesMod overlays are gone for ranked, but the most popular features survived as built-ins, Steam Deck and Linux still play normally, and EAC stays off for everything that isn't online. Boot the game, let EAC do its first-time install, and you should be back into queue. If you mostly played for the mods, the new base game already does several of the things you missed.